The Demon of Dakar (41 page)

Manuel and Patricio were awakened
by a thud and they sat up at the same moment, as if synchronized.

“What was it?”

“I don’t know,” Manuel said.

Outside the narrow window just under the ceiling, they heard shouting and angry voices. Manuel got up.

“It’s the police,” Patricio cried.

“Keep quiet!”

Manuel fetched the only chair in the room and placed it under the window that was covered with a black piece of fabric. He climbed up and started to pick away at the tape at the edge of the cloth.

“No,” Patricio said, terrified, “they’ll shoot you.”

“I have to see what it is,” Manuel said, lifting a corner and trying to peer through the dusty glass.

“I see some legs,” he whispered.

“Are they in uniform?”

“Don’t think so.”

At that moment the window was struck by a projectile and the glass shattered. Manuel instinctively dived onto the floor. Tear gas was his first thought. The voices outside died down. A piece of glass that had caught on the fabric trembled before it fell to the floor with a clinking sound.

Patricio and Manuel stared bewitched at the window. The cloth fluttered in a sudden breeze.

What were they waiting for? Manuel wondered. No gas was spreading in the basement, the voices outside were quiet and no sounds were heard from the other side of the door.

Manuel pulled over his bag and took out the pistol he had taken from Armas’s lifeless hand. Patricio stared at the weapon.

“You’re armed?”

“Keep quiet,” Manuel barked.

Suddenly they heard a laugh and someone screamed in a high voice. Manuel climbed back up on the chair and moved the fabric aside.

“They will shoot you,” Patricio repeated.

A soccer ball was wedged in the window frame. Manuel quickly refastened the tape, slipped rather than climbed down from the chair, and collapsed on the mattress.

“A soccer ball,” Patricio said and burst into hysterical laughter.

“Quiet! We have to be quiet.”

Patricio stared at his brother who had stood up and was leaning over him.

“Where did you get the gun?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Manuel said, but then told him what had happened, how he had been forced to kill the tall one and afterward had taken his weapon.

Patricio stared sorrowfully at his brother. Manuel avoided his gaze.

“So the tall one is dead,” Patricio said flatly at the end.

Manuel nodded.

The silence and inactivity was complete until they heard a key turn in the lock and Ramon swiftly snuck in and closed the door behind him.

“Hello, my Chilean friends,” he said in greeting. “What has happened? You look a little somber.”

“A soccer ball hit the window so the glass shattered,” Manuel explained. “We thought it was the police.”

Ramon grinned.

“It scared you?”

“Guess,” Manuel said, surprised at how lightly the Spaniard was taking it.

“We’ll have to fix it later,” Ramon said and took two passports out of his coat pocket. “Right now we’re in a hurry. You are going on a flight.”

“Fly?”

Ramon told them what he had planned. Twenty minutes to ten this same evening there was a plane to London.

“The airport is a little south of Stockholm and you can buy the tickets there. If there are no seats you will have to wait until tomorrow morning. Then you can sleep in the forest.”

“But why London?” Patricio asked.

“You have to get out of the country as soon as possible. From London it will be easy for you to keep traveling.”

“Okay,” Manuel said.

For him the most important thing was to leave the basement.

“I have brought two small suitcases for you to pack your belongings. Wash up quickly. It’s important that you look tidy. I will drive you there. That will cost a little. Do you have money?”

“How much will it cost?”

“Three thousand dollars.”

Manuel nodded.

“Is it so far?” Patricio asked.

Ramon laughed.

“No, but it is your only option. We have to pass Stockholm. You will have to sit in a closed van. It is the van of a paint company. Understood?”

Manuel and Patricio looked at their new passports. Abel and Carlos Morales were the names that would get them out of Sweden.

Manuel was a little unhappy that Ramon was charging so much to
drive them to the airport but said nothing. He knew what the answer would be.

They arrived at the airport a little before eight. Ramon dropped them off at the parking lot and gave the brothers final instructions on how they should act. Manuel took out his gun and handed it to Ramon without a word. The latter smiled a little and surprised the brothers by immediately taking out the ammunition, carefully cleaning off the weapon, and then disappeared for a minute or so into a nearby patch of woods.

“I’m dropping you off here,” he said when he returned. “With a little luck you will be fine.”

He looked at them almost tenderly and gave them each an unexpected hug good-bye, then jumped into the van and left the area.

The airport was much smaller than they had imagined. It basically consisted of a hangarlike building with a cafe and a departure lounge that looked more like a bus terminal.

At his brother’s question if they should split up and buy tickets separately, Manuel simply shook his head. He felt as if he were incapable of speaking.

The flight with a departure time of 21:40 to London was fully booked, they were told at the ticket counter in the terminal. The woman behind the counter saw their disappointment and tried to comfort them with the fact that there was a flight the following morning. Could they wait until then?

“Our brother in England is sick,” Manuel said. “There is no possibility that we can make it on this flight?”

“No, I’m sorry. It’s full, but there are three seats left on the early flight tomorrow morning.”

The brothers looked at each other. Manuel felt as if luck was deserting them. They had managed to get this far but no further. So close. He looked at the young woman behind the counter. Her eyes were so blue.

“We’ll take two tickets,” he said finally.

The first thing Ann Lindell
did when she reached the police station at shortly after eight in the morning was to check if any tips had come in during the evening and night. The police had set up a special telephone number that the public could call with observations related to the escape of and search for the Alavez brothers.

Twenty-eight calls had been received, of which three could be considered of interest. The first one that Lindell decided to follow up on had come in from an older couple, reporting a breaking and entering of their holiday cottage in Börje. The burglar was believed to have spent the night in their shed and had stolen some food items but had otherwise not caused any damage. The remarkable thing was that the burglar had chopped up a fallen apple tree and even taken the trouble to stack the wood. At first the man thought it was a nephew who had taken the trouble to do this. The nephew would often help the couple with practical tasks that they themselves could not or did not have the strength to do, but the nephew had known nothing about this when his uncle called.

Lindell decided that Ola Haver and a technician should go to Börje and perform an initial examination.

The second tip came from a woman who claimed to have seen “a dark-skinned man of suspicious appearance” behave strangely outside her home. Lindell looked up her address, checked the time and called up the woman.

“Admittedly I am an old woman, but I am not blind.”

“I’m sure you aren’t,” Lindell said.

“He was all sweaty. At first I thought it was one of those who messes about.”

“What do you mean?”

“They scurry back and forth.”

Her voice was sharp as a saw blade. Lindell smiled to herself.

“The strange thing was he made the sign of the cross. One reads so much about religious fanatics. Do you know how old I am?”

“No,” Lindell said.

“Eighty-nine this fall. On Sibylla-day.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“No, I can’t believe it myself. My husband says I am like an antelope. He is a retired forester and knows such things.”

“I believe it,” Lindell said, “but if we go back to the man that you saw. Why are you calling now, several days after you saw him?”

“I saw it in the paper. He looked like the one in the picture. The one you are looking for. I told Carl-Ragnar I had to call.”

“That was excellent,” Lindell said. “Could we possibly come by with some photographs for you to look at?”

“You will do as you like. I am home until noon. Then I have to go to the hospital.”

“Nothing serious, I hope,” Lindell said and immediately cursed her amateurishness.

After the conversation, which had continued for several minutes with talk about the woman’s many female friends who were doing poorly, she dialed first Bea’s number then changed her mind and called Sammy Nilsson instead. She gave him the delicate task of compiling a collection of pictures and visiting a charming lady who lived in Slobodan Andersson’s neighborhood.

The third tip had come in that morning regarding an observation made in the vicinity of the Fyris river. A man with the unusual surname Koort from Bälinge had seen two men camping not far from Ulva mill north of Uppsala. They were foreigners and according to the notes that had been made, the man had thought they worked in the nearby strawberry fields. But when he had bumped into the farmer yesterday by the river and mentioned the two men, the farmer had denied that any of his employees were camping.

Lindell dialed the number. Mrs. Koort answered. Istvan Koort had left to go fishing.

“He will be back for lunch, hopefully without fish,” his wife sighed.

“Does he have a cell phone?”

“Not when he’s fishing.”

“Where was he going?”

“He tends to stay around Ulva.”

Lindell asked her to call as soon as he returned home.

After the three calls, Lindell felt more confident that the Alavez brothers would soon be located and arrested. The likelihood that they would manage to remain hidden in the long run were small. She checked the time. Five to nine. Time for a first cup of coffee.

At 06:43, three minutes delayed, Ryan Air flight FR51 took off from Skavsta airport outside Nyköping. Abel and Carlos Morales were on board. The check-in had gone smoothly. A brief glance in their passports, some phrases in English, and a wish that they have a good trip. That was all.

Then they had gone aboard and taken their seats without saying a single word to each other. From the window, Manuel had watched the contours of the city recede into the distance. It was his last glimpse of Sweden before he leaned back and closed his eyes.

At 07:57 local time, the
plane prepared for landing at Standsted airport, north of London. Manuel drank the last of his coffee and checked his watch. A couple of minutes to nine.

The landscape resembled a brown-green
weave in which the cultivated fields were patterns in a warp consisting of the sharp mountain ridges. After a moment he grew dizzy from staring out the window and closed his eyes.

The ripple of voices of expectant travelers rose the same speed as the plane sank through the layers of air. He opened his eyes and looked around. As far as he could tell, he was the only white man in the cabin.

He folded his tray table. It had been a long trip but he would soon be at its end. If he had understood the details correctly there were buses that went up into the mountains. If not, he would have to rent a car and maybe someone to guide him. He had a generous travel kitty.

The mountains looked ominous. How could people live this way? Was it really possible to grow anything in this broken terrain?

He saw the plane’s shadow on the ground. It looked like a hawk darting forward. The shadow grew clearer. They would be landing shortly.

His mission was simple. The only thing that worried him was the possibility of catching a stomach bug. He hated suffering from uncontrolled diarrhea.

Gerardo’s only son, Enrico, came
rushing down the alley under the Alavez family’s house. Manuel and Patricio were on the roof. They had carried up sacks of coffee in order to spread the beans to dry. They saw him come running, out of breath. “A gringo,” he got out.

Manuel leaned over the fence that surrounded the roof terrace.

“What are you saying?”

“A gringo came on the bus. He is asking for you.”

Manuel stared at the boy.

“For us?”

Enrico nodded avidly.

“What does he look like?”

“Like a gringo.”

Manuel turned to his brother. Patricio stood frozen, an empty bag in his hand.

“Pack our things,” Manuel said, running down the steps. He took a firm hold of the boy’s shoulders and looked him in the eye.

“Tell me everything!”

“That is everything!”

Enrico stared at his neighbor who had never before been threatening or violent. Manuel let go of the boy and Enrico shook himself, as if he wanted to rid himself of the remaining pain from his bony shoulders.

“Follow me!”

Manuel set off down the alley, the boy at his heels. They ran along a drainage ditch, turned down toward the village center, and took the stairs. There they were forced to slow down. The stone steps were damp and slippery. They heard panting chimes from the little bell of the church.

Manuel peered out from behind the dilapidated house where the recently deceased logger Oscar Meija had made the best plows in the village. He was partly concealed by a set of stacked
yebágo
. Then he spotted the gringo. It was a tall man. A leather suitcase stood at his feet. It resembled a fallen animal. He was talking to Felix, the village idiot, the boy who never grew big or sensible. A flock of children stood nearby. The exhaust from the bus that the man had come on still hovered like a dark cloud over the square outside the veranda of the town house where the local officials of the PRI were drinking as usual.

Felix pointed first here then there, and laughed wholeheartedly. Manuel knew the gringo would get no help there. Felix pulled on the man’s arm. The stranger shook him off but turned his body to see where the boy was pointing. He looked up toward the school where the faded
portraits of the heroes of the revolution hung in a row, and then he turned around completely.

Manuel staggered back. The man from the mountains had returned! The man whom he had killed by slashing his throat, and then heaved into the water far away in Sweden now stood here in the flesh.

“What is it?” Enrico whimpered.

“Bhni guí’a,”
Manuel whispered, turning around and stumbling on a pile of lumber. He got back on his feet and ran away as if he had seen an evil spirit.

Enrico remained behind uncertainly, but when he saw the gringo reach for his luggage he followed Manuel, who had now climbed to the top of the stairs and disappeared behind the bushes.

The dead return, the dead return, Manuel recited silently to himself as he ran. The tall one had not only returned, he also looked younger and healthier than when Manuel had met him in Sweden.

When Manuel stormed into the house, Patricio had packed two bags of clothes. Maria stood beside him, pulling on his shirt. She repeatedly asked them what had happened. Patricio freed himself from his mother and took a machete down from the wall without a word.

“We have to flee,” Manuel said vehemently and yet controlled, as if his face had congealed into an unchanging death mask.

He grabbed his own machete and a small ax. Patricio and his mother looked fearfully at him. They had never seen him so distraught.

He went up to his mother, gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, took hold of one of the bags and ran out.

“We will be back,” Patricio said, hugged her and left.

She followed them out into the yard where Manuel was anxiously looking into the alley. The neighbor’s boy stood waiting by the gate.

“Where will you go?” the mother asked with such despair in her voice that the brothers paused for a moment.

Manuel shot Patricio a glance before he replied.

“El norte,” he said.